The variety of life underpins our social and economic wellbeing and will be increasingly an indispensible resource in the battle against climate change. However, our consumption and production patterns are depriving ecosystems of their capacity to withstand climate change and deliver the services we need from them. As we understand more about the ways that climate change is impacting biodiversity, it becomes clear that we cannot tackle the two crises separately. Their interdependence requires us to address them together.

The sources of the original data: 1) Black line - HadCRUT4 from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, baseline period 1850-1899 (Morice et al. 2012) with the grey area representing the 95% confidence range, 2) Red line – MLOST from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Centre, baseline period 1880-1899 (Smith et al., 2008), and 3) Blue line - GISSTemp from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies, baseline period 1880-1899 (Hansen et al., 2010). Upper graph shows anomalies and lower graph shows decadal average anomalies for the same datasets.
Europe is defined as the area between 35° to 70° North and -25° to 30° East, plus Turkey (35° to 40° North and 30° to 45° East).

The map shows the percentage of organic carbon content in the surface horizon of soils in Europe.
The darker regions correspond to soils with high values of organic carbon. The darkest colours, especially in Estonia, Fennoscandinavia, Ireland and the United Kingdom, denote peatlands.

The threat of climate change is being addressed globally by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): the long-term objective is 'to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system'.

Mitigation and adaptation are key actions in dealing with climate change. The EEA supports the implementation of related legislation, evaluation of policies and development of long-term strategies of both mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.